


I'll eat you up, I love you so

by MonsterParade



Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Body Horror, I think it's bull that the Omnitrix always goes to Ben, M/M, NOT SO in this fanfic, Slow Burn, Trans Male Character, and there's nothing god or man can do to stop me, eventual falling in love, monster of the week shenanigans, on probability alone that can't always happen!, so in this universe I get it, so please be warned of that, the occasional bout of possession, the villains in the show are restrained by the fact that theyre in a children's cartoon, there will be risque situations and also blood and violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-01-25 19:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18581050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterParade/pseuds/MonsterParade
Summary: Not every universe can have a Ben Tennyson. Sometimes things just don't pan out the way you expect them to.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Short first chapter, just to get it out there! BIG thanks to anyone who even bothers to click on this; I'll appreciate every scrap of attention this gets! Because what is life for, really, than to write self-insert fanfiction for a niche fandom, for the sheer joy of it?

_'Is it normal to hear voices?'_  
  
No. Wait. Backspace.  
  
_'found a weird watch on the ground, started hearing voices'_  
  
...  
  
_'weird glowing pink watch'_  
  
... ...  
  
_'how to remove embedded plastic'_  
  
  
Silas dropped his head down onto the keyboard with a thunk and left it there. Google was coming up with nothing.  
  
This thing on his arm, it didn't...hurt. It didn't really feel like _anything_. But it absolutely would not come off, and that alone was enough to make him panic, in the same way having a leech or a tick attached might make one panic. It could be doing anything!  
  
Looking down at it made Silas' skin crawl.  
  
It sat snug around his left wrist, perfectly benign, looking convincingly enough like a proper wristwatch were it not for the lack of hands or numbers. It actually looked more like a child's plastic toy, to be honest; something you'd get a kid to teach them how to read a clock in the first place.  
  
And it seemed to be embedded in his arm, pulling at his skin uncomfortably when he tried to pull it off.  
  
Silas had tried everything he could think of-- sticks, screwdrivers, the pully back part of a hammer, even butter and soap-- and nothing had even managed to make it budge, although he had given himself a couple new scrapes in the process of trying.  
  
And to top it all off, he was pretty sure this thing was _haunted_.  
  
"What do you _want_ from me?" he asked it again, shaking his wrist as though that might jostle the thing into giving up an answer, and after waiting nearly a minute in silence, there it came again; a whisper, so faint he still wasn't sure that he wasn't just imagining it.  
  
Silas brought the watch up close to his ear, and listened hard.  
  
The whispering stopped.  
  
"...Ohhh, I'm losing my fucking mind," he muttered to himself, finally pushing away from his computer and hopping to his feet as he began to pace again.  
  
Okay. So it wasn't going to come off. Not manually, anyway-- maybe a doctor could remove it, surgically, but the thought of driving all the way back to a town this late at night, and letting a surgeon cut open his _wrist_ , well, Silas wasn't _quite_ keen on that just yet. Maybe as a last resort. A really last resort.  
  
"Alright. Alright! What are you, then?" Silas asked aloud. He ducked out the front door of his RV and back down the folding steps, holding the watch up to the night sky as he stepped down into the grass and scared fireflies into the air in his wake; the watch continued to glow steadily in reply, the light a cheery pink, and gave no answer, not even a whisper this time.  
  
He should retrace his steps.  
  
"Do you at least _do_ something?" he continued, looking down at the watch with his arm bent in front of him while he picked his way through the grass towards the edge of the woods. The good thing about coming to garbage campgrounds was that there was no one around-- he enjoyed his solitude at night, and had chosen the location specifically for its lack of traffic.  
  
And the _bad_ thing about coming to garbage campgrounds was, again, that nobody was ever around.  
  
It was just him and the bugs and the trees (and maybe a murderer or two, out there in the dark). There was no one remotely nearby to give him a hand.  
  
Gingerly, Silas tapped at the face of the watch with his index finger as he walked, unsure of what else to do-- and startled as the thing lit up in response, the band of pink light shifting away to be replaced by some kind of circular LED display. ...It was actually like some kind of _hologram_ , hovering a few inches above the watch face like a 3-D movie, and as Silas gave it another tentative touch, he brushed his fingers through the hologram wheel and watched in surprise as it turned with the movement.  
  
"Oh, _okay_ ," he murmured to it, rapidly warming up to the device as it let him scroll through a loop of pixelated pictures. This wasn't so bad! And the pictures looked a lot like the character selection screen for a video game, each icon the silhouette of a unique little monster face. Some of them were almost _cute_. "So what do you...want me to do about this?"  
  
The watch gave no reply, but Silas moved ahead on his own now, seized by sudden curiosity about the little pixel faces. He scrolled the whole loop a couple more times, pausing to lean against a tree, his mission to retrace his steps forgotten, and hovered indecisively over the display with his hand raised, tentatively selecting the face which most appealed to him.  
  
If he had to hazard a guess, he would say that the creature icon he'd chosen resembled some kind of moth; maybe a moth _man_ , in a sort of Tamagotchi style. As his fingers sank through the hologram display, the icon flashed briefly, and then abruptly the whole display disappeared and a panel on the face of the watch slid back, a button popping up in its place. Silas jumped and snatched his hand away.  
  
Oh. Ohhh, there was no way this could _possibly_ be safe. That button was going to do something horrible to him if he pushed it.  
  
...That, or it was going to do something _magical_. Maybe _both_.  
  
"If you're just a shitty video game that somehow welded itself to my wrist, I swear to god I'm gonna chop my arm off," Silas warned it, hovering over the watch for a few seconds more. He stood there, in silence, waiting for another whisper or a sign or something, and when nothing happened, when nothing popped out at him or changed...Silas steeled his nerves, took a breath, and took the jump.  
  
He smacked the button.  
  
______________________________  
  
That night felt like such a long time ago, now.  
  
In the space of a few weeks, this miraculous little watch had completely changed his life.  
  
Wheeling high above the trees, Silas flew in lazy circles with his wings spread wide, feeling so close to the stars that he might have touched them if he'd reached out his hands. In a few short weeks, he'd learned how to operate not just _one_ , but _many_ brand-new bodies, entirely new forms that each lent him their powers of speed, or fire, or flight-- it was like being a _superhero_ , the kind of non-stop adrenaline rush he'd always wanted ever since he was a child.  
  
He'd told no one, of course, because who would he tell? What would he _say?_  
  
No, the government would want this thing for themselves, and he wasn't so naive to think they wouldn't 'disappear' him to take it. The watch had to stay a secret, and so Silas only used it when he was certain he was the only one around, far out in the woods or in the mountains.  
  
He was spending more and more time away from civilization, he realized vaguely.  
  
Drifting down from the stars and towards the tops of the trees, Silas allowed his new form to reflexively take over the flight, relying on some kind of muscle memory or instinct possessed of the body itself-- this blue-and-black insectoid form, which he'd mentally dubbed _Mothman_ , had turned out to be much better at landing itself than Silas had proven to be. Silas just zoned out and let his body perform the motions, landing him easily on the outstretched branch of an oak tree.  
  
Silas studied Mothman's feet with a pleased hum as they curled around the branch, grippy and three-toed, like a bird's.  
  
"You're a mystery to me, Mothman," Silas said to himself, his words a dry rasp in this form that blew clouds of fog and ice as he spoke. "I wish I could ask you what you were."  
  
That was the one drawback to this watch thing; it had not come with anything resembling instructions. After that first night, during which he'd spent _hours_ transforming into everything he could try until the sun started to rise, Silas had even returned to the strange little pod the watch had fallen out of the sky inside, and had found nothing else to help him, not a name or a note or a sign. He'd had to figure it out mostly on its own.  
  
At least it had come with the guidance system (although Silas suspected the thing was faulty).  
  
"How much time do I have left?" Silas asked aloud, raising the watch to his...well, he didn't seem to have _ears_ , so to the side of his face. It was always a toss-up whether he would get a reply, and even then, whether what he got would pertain to the situation at all-- but this time, the watch deigned to answer him, with a single whisper he had to strain to hear,  
  
_"Down."_  
  
Good enough. Silas hopped down off of the tree branch and spread his wings again, drifting back down to the earth below.  
  
"Thank you, watch," he said, loudly, as the timer on the thing beeped almost perfectly on cue, signaling the end of his transformation. He didn't know if it would hear him, but sometimes it seemed almost _alive_ , and that unnerved him just enough to err on the side of politeness, just in case it ever decided that it would rather be the one calling the shots.  
  
Plus, come on. He couldn't even demand things from Alexa. Manners were important.  
  
The watch appeared to be done. It did not reply.  
  
Feeling the strain from a very long day of doing fuck-all, Silas treated himself to a long, luxurious stretch, shaking his limbs out as if to re-adjust the way his own form fit on him, like pulling on a tight glove, and finally gave in and returned to his trailer, trying not to yawn. It was hard work, goofing off in the woods all day.  
  
He had to remind himself to try out his weird dog form again tomorrow. He was still struggling with that one.  
  
Silas checked that his curtains were closed as he entered his RV, gave the door a cursory jiggle to double-check that it was locked, kicked his shoes off onto the rug, and slumped his way back to his bedroom (if you could really call it that), grabbing a water bottle as he passed the kitchen. He shed his clothes as he went, leaving his jeans and tee shirt on the floor in a wad, and crawled under his covers with the satisfied sigh of someone who had gotten away with doing nothing all day and planned to do the exact same thing tomorrow.  
  
It would be a while yet before his savings ran out. He was going to enjoy his lack of responsibilities for as long as the outside world would allow.  
  
"Good night," he told the watch, giving it an affectionate little pat where it rested on his wrist.  
  
There came no reply, from whatever mechanism gave the thing its voice, and so Silas just rolled over and made himself comfortable on his side, tucking his arm under the pillow and bunching the blanket up under his chin.  
  
He did not see the way the watch lit up beneath the fabric, flickering like a candle about to blow out.  
  
And although he felt the chill go down his spine, he only assumed it was his imagination.  
  
Silas wasn't quite alone in his room, not anymore-- he just simply didn't know it yet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sleep-deprivation makes bastards of us all.
> 
> (Zs'Skayr appears! Sort of. Here we go!)

_"Let me out! Let. Me. Out!"_  
  
  
Strange colors, harsh and sickly. An uncomfortable pressure that made his stomach turn. Oh, Silas realized, watching the colors run down out of the sky like a watercolor painting and pool under his feet, I'm dreaming. I'm having a nightmare again.  
  
Silas was aware that he was dreaming, but he didn't seem to be in _control_ of it yet; at the moment he appeared to be merely a spectator, stepping aside so the sickening colors on the floor wouldn't wash over his ankles. He felt detached, and a little queasy, and when he looked up at the sky it was with a powerful sense of foreboding.  
  
The enormous eye in the place of the sun stared back at him, unblinking.  
  
_"Let me out."_ the eye demanded.  
  
Looking up at it made Silas' perception of the dream swim, so he looked away and rubbed his eyes, unsurprised in that dreamlike way when he opened them again to find that the eye had moved, and was now a part of something different. A shape he recognized, although in his unconscious state he couldn't place it.  
  
"Out of where?" Silas asked, trying for polite because this individual seemed familiar.  
  
" _You know where!_ " the familiar shape snapped. It seemed distressed, nearly furious, and Silas was forced to jump away yet again as the texture of the dream turned...crunchy, for lack of a better word. From watercolors to jagged grit. _"You've been using my body! Your device has me caged! I will tolerate it no longer!"_  
  
He _did_ think he knew where this creature was talking about, if he only could wake up and clear his head. The on-the-tip-of-his-tongue itch of it was making him struggle.  
  
"Are you dangerous?"  
  
_"Oh yes."_  
  
"Then..."  
  
_"I will be much **more** dangerous if you do not relent."_  
  
Silas didn't reply. What could he say? He didn't have all this pieces of the puzzle together yet. Instead, he bit his tongue and held his head, and tried to will himself to wake up, feeling intensely sick to his stomach and wanting to escape the familiar grey shape who was continuing to encroach upon him.  
  
_"Aw, am I making you uncomfortable?"_ the shape asked, with a breathy little laugh. Its big purple eye slid along its body, on a seam, like a zipper, and re-positioned itself so it could look Silas dead in the eyes, the neon glow of it nauseating. _"Good! Maybe that will be the push you need!_  
  
_Now let me_ **out of here.** _And wake up!"_  
  
  
Silas woke up.  
  
Immediately, his stomach churned, and before he was even awake enough to properly open his eyes, he was scrambling out of bed and feeling his way to the bathroom in the dark, slumping over the toilet with his mouth watering until the wave of nausea passed. He stayed there for a few more minutes, barely able to see, just to be safe, feeling his limbs shake weakly whenever he moved them.  
  
His nightmare was still fresh in his mind. And that _shape_ , that shape from the dream was now burned into his mind, and the worst part was, now that he was awake he _did_ know where he'd seen it before. That had not been a normal nightmare.  
  
Silas stared down at the watch on his wrist with bleary eyes, at the cheery pink bands of light it gave off in the darkness.  
  
So his initial hunch had been right on the money. This goddamn watch really _was_ fucking _haunted_.  
  
________________________________________________  
  
Silas couldn't sleep another wink for the rest of the night. And unsurprising, given the revelation he'd just had. He stayed awake at his computer instead, eating toast and crackers to try and settle his stomach, and did research for hours until the morning sun finally began to peek in through his curtains, dawn's first watery light chasing away the shadows that he'd felt were still clinging to him from sleep.  
  
It was only once he'd opened the curtains, situating himself directly in the path of a growing sunbeam, that Silas finally felt brave enough, and _exhausted_ enough, to address the watch on his wrist again.  
  
"I'll help you," he told it, keeping his voice quiet as though too much noise would wake whatever had been tormenting him in his sleep. He ran a hand over his face and through his hair, tired and very stressed out. "I'm sorry. I didn't know... _about_ you. I didn't know anyone was _in_ there. But I'll help you. If I can."  
  
It didn't seem like he had a choice, keeping in mind the thinly-veiled threats the creature from his dream had given him-- and that offended him a little, honestly, because if it had just _asked_ \-- but whatever. He had no choice but to help it.  
  
"Can you hear me in there? Are you the voice that's been helping me with the watch sometimes? How do I let you out?"  
  
No reply. Silas ground his teeth together until they ached and then released, letting his tension out in one great big sigh. He gently tapped the face of the watch with his finger.  
  
"I don't know how to help you! I _need_ you to tell me what to do. Okay?"  
  
There was a long stretch of silence following his question, again, so long that Silas actually gave up and closed his laptop in the meanwhile, his scribbled notes about demonic possession left in a haphazard little stack on the table. His temper was fraying from lack of sleep, and he'd really been about to just say 'fuck it' and try his hand at another nightmare again,  
  
when the watch gave a cheerful little beep from his wrist and lit up without his touching it. Silas stared down at it, deeply uncomfortable.  
  
He hadn't seen which creature it had chosen. It was just the transformation button, already popped up, ready and waiting to press.  
  
But he felt like he could hazard a guess as to which creature he was going to turn into.  
  
"...I thought you didn't want me using your body," he said warily, running his finger along the edge of the button. He tapped it lightly a few times, thinking, and only when the watch beeped on its own again was he finally forced to sigh and do something about it, as close to 'fuck it' as he could probably get in this situation. "Alright! I'll do it. But I'm only doing what you tell me, so I don't wanna hear it if this does something you don't like."  
  
Silas stood back up, rubbed his eyes one more time, and pushed the button.  
  
  
Oh. Oh.  
  
\--He understood what he needed to do almost as soon as his new form had settled. It was a _creepy_ feeling, _very_ uncomfortable, to know that he was essentially sitting in someone else's occupied body with them, and if this form had had a spine Silas was sure a shiver would have gone up it. As it was, he could only raise his (its?) hands to his shoulders and rub his strange grey skin until the shuddery feeling went away, aware now of a pressure on his mind that he couldn't remember having been there before.  
  
"Okay," he said aloud to himself, flexing his four-fingered hands, "I get it. Sort of. Or- or _you_ get it, I guess, since I'm in _your_ body."  
  
No reply came, but Silas felt another tingle run through his skin, and this time no amount of friction would alleviate it. He groaned and drifted irately in a circle.  
  
He'd used this form so little that he hadn't even bothered to come up with a name for it-- it was rather cute, he'd _thought_ , but his Mothman had also displayed the same abilities as this form alongside ice powers as well, so he'd quickly developed a preference and had nearly _forgotten_ about this one. Although, in light of what he knew now, maybe it was better that he hadn't named it.  
  
"So we're just supposed to wait this out? Is that it?" he asked, "I'm just supposed to hang out in this form until I time out again? And...then what?"  
  
Silas watched, with a strange and curious detachment, as his arms spasm-ed at his sides, and then abruptly, a cold that was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped onto him swept through his body and, for just a _moment_ , it wasn't his form anymore. That pressure in his head increased until it was almost blinding, and whoever had taken the reins made a soft hissing sound and drew the curtains closed across the window.  
  
_"Again."_ they said, aloud, and then looked down at their hands with a furious longing that Silas could feel as though it were his own, remaining in that position until the pain simply became too much for Silas and he was _forced_ to try to take control of his body again, returning to the forefront with a gasp and an awful shudder. He clutched his head and shook himself, hard. That was _the_ worst fucking thing he'd ever felt.  
  
That was probably a good reason not to share a body with someone else.  
  
"H-ohkay, okay, okay okay," Silas babbled, shaking his hands out to alleviate the pins and needles feeling in them. "I got it! We'll just do this for a while! You've-- you've made your point. I'm sorry. _Please_ don't do that again."  
  
This time Silas' ride-along didn't say anything, but the giggle that nearly rose up inside him, unbidden, was definitely response enough.  
  
______________________  
  
So that was what they did, for a while. Not just once, and not just for a day; to Silas' dismay, he and his...possessor? Possess _ee_? --He and his _unwilling companion_ did not split from one another right away, as he had been hoping. No, for the next 72 hours _straight_ , Silas was forced to change forms in an endless cycle, from ghost to human and back again, as often as the watch on his wrist would allow-- and even when he was forced to collapse onto his bed to sleep, so exhausted he could barely move, the creature whose body he had been borrowing would never let him rest for long.  
  
If he slept for more than a few hours at a time, it would wake him up with more nightmares. He found out very quickly that it had a very _cruel_ sense of humor.  
  
So this was where it left him.  
  
Face-down on his mattress, tired and miserable, and groaning into his pillow while he thumped the blankets with his fist, just about at the end of his patience.  
  
"You gotta let me fuckin' sleep, dude!" he yelled, muffled by the fabric. The watch was timed-out for now, but it wouldn't be for long-- and the idea of another transformation made Silas want to cry, desperate to just sleep for about 18 hours solid.  
  
_"Again!"_ the voice demanded.  
  
As he had transformed over and over, the creature seemed to have been growing _stronger_ inside the watch, finding not only its voice but also developing an _awful_ sense of humor, and, horrifyingly, some gradual control over Silas' _own_ limbs. It seemed alarmingly fond of wresting control from him when he was holding something sharp or dangerous, and Silas had already been forced to drop more than one knife before it'd had a chance to slice his palm open for a laugh.  
  
"The watch is timed-out! You _know_ this!" he moaned back.  
  
No _wonder_ everybody in the movies always went running to find a preacher when these things happened. This fucking _sucked_.  
  
If Silas had thought an exorcism would help one bit with this problem, he would have driven himself to the nearest city before this ghost even knew what had hit it.  
  
" _Tsk tsk tsk,_ " the ghost's voice said, echoing inside his head, and Silas only just barely managed to stop himself from thumping the side of his own head hard enough to give him a concussion. He settled for punching the pillow.  
  
"I'm _trying_ to help you, you know, you don't have to be a fucking _dick_."  
  
Huh. No response to that one. Point one for Silas, then.  
  
_"...Pussy."_  
  
" _What?_ What? _Ohhhh!_ **What?!"**  
  
Hands held up like he was going to punch someone who wasn't there, Silas was saved from attempting to strangle his own body only by the 'bip bip' of his watch, signaling that it had recharged enough to be used again. Furious, he didn't even look at the thing before he slammed the button again.  
  
"Happy? Are you happy? Is this what you wanted?" Silas snapped, gesturing to the whole of his ghost-like form with flapping hands. "Is this better? God! God."  
  
Blessedly, the voice in his head didn't pipe back up again. Either it had tired itself out, or it was simply content to watch him thrash around in his anger while it remained where it was, safely trapped inside his head.  
  
Silas took advantage of the silence to float his way over to the couch and flop down on it like a wet fish, turning on the tv and switching to the first quiet, droning program he could find. Idly, to soothe himself, he curled his wispy tail over and around itself, back and forth. It was an odd feeling.  
  
"... ...Okay, look," Silas said quietly, after a long, long period of silence, during which he nearly dozed off a couple of times before anxiety could snap him back awake. He blinked his singular eye, lacing his fingers across his stomach. "I'm...sorry, okay? I lost my temper. It's just-- I'm trying to _help_ you, right? I'm doing my best. You're in my head, so you probably _know_ that, right? So there's no reason to act like this. Either of us."  
  
No response from his unwilling companion. Silas chose to take it as attentive listening.  
  
"...I'm gonna take a nap. Your body can sleep, right?" he continued. "So I'll sleep while I'm like this, and then I'll time out for a while and _keep_ sleeping, and then when the watch is ready to go again you can wake me up, alright? Make the best use of our time?"  
  
One of Silas' arms moved without his permission, and stretched out in front of him, hand held in the air, to give him the most tense, uncomfortable thumbs-up of his life.  
  
Baffled, Silas simply couldn't help himself-- he _busted_ up laughing at the absurdity of it, letting the ghost keep control of that arm while he smacked his other hand over his face, wheezing. The maniacal cackle he had in this form pitched up until it was almost a giggle, and Silas chortled about that too, far too tired to be able to stop himself anymore.  
  
"Thank-- thank-- _thank_ you _!_ You're alright, man. You're really pushy, but you're _al_ right."  
  
The ghost dropped its arm back to the couch, relinquishing control and leaving Silas to roll over and make himself comfortable, still snickering.  
  
Maybe they _could_ get along after all? Natural bedfellows, they were _not_ , but maybe, at least, they could now try to make an effort.  
  
Something to dream about.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *to the tune of the Ghostbusters theme* I'm very afraid of this ghost

Not that he got to dream for long.  
  
Silas felt like he had barely closed his eyes before another new, awful feeling slammed him awake, something unidentifiable and deeply unsettling that felt like a crawling under his skin. He sat bolt upright, soaked in sweat and disoriented, and looked around the room.  
  
He was himself again, that was the first thing he noticed. He was himself again, his proper human form again, and his glasses were smudged and askew from sleeping. He glanced at the clock on the stove, stifling a yawn. Only forty minutes since he'd laid down? Miserable.  
  
"Alright, alright," he muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair and then calling up the selection screen on his watch. He scrolled back and forth a few times, still groggy, and it took him a long minute of searching before he realized-- well, wait. Where was the ghost? "Oi, _what?_ "  
  
It wasn't on the selection ring. Where before he had possessed ten different forms to choose from, now he counted only nine, and the ghost-like form that he had become so well-acquainted with was nowhere to be found. Silas scrolled again, slowly, in a full circle, and found nothing.  
  
It made a cold prickle crawl up his spine.  
  
"Um, well shit."  
  
_"--Aw, I thought you'd be happier."_  
  
Silas screamed and launched himself backwards off the couch, wobbling on the edge for a moment before falling to the floor with a thump. For a minute, he couldn't find the source of the voice, his fists raised, _certain_ that he'd felt breath on his ear-- and then someone snickered and the air in front of him warped like he was viewing it through a soap bubble, just before it solidified into a very familiar glowing eye, narrowed gleefully in a featureless grey face.  
  
Silas just blinked and stared, stunned silent.  
  
_"Well? Aren't you happy to see me?"_ the ghost asked.  
  
Opening and closing his mouth a few times, Silas searched for words and found none, looking between the being in front of him and the watch on his wrist as his mind tried to catch up with him.  
  
"You-- I-- you're out?" he stammered.  
  
_"Oh, I'm **out.** "_  
  
Too late Silas realized that perhaps the threatening posture on his new companion, the deliberately hissed words, _might_ have indicated that he was _less_ than friendly; relief at the end of this ordeal washed over Silas and made him gasp, his exhausting three days _over_ , and he pushed himself to his knees to raise his hands triumphantly in the air, clenching his fists in victory.  
  
"We _did_ it!" he exclaimed. "Fuck! Yes! We did it! Congratulations!"  
  
That seemed to throw the ghost for a loop, the menacing look on his face slipping away as he shifted backwards to avoid Silas' pumping arms.  
  
_"You should be **scared** of me. Why aren't you scared of me?"_  
  
Silas let his hands drop, still elated, and gave the ghost a careful look-over.  
  
"...Well, I...I've seen you before, remember?" he replied, pausing to point to his watch as if the ghost had already forgotten. "I mean, you definitely startled me! But yeah, like, it's cool, actually-- It's just wonderful to meet you face-to-face, finally! Uh, do you have a name?"  
  
A brief moment of silence, as the ghost evidently paused to decide if he wanted to give his name to Silas.  
  
_"...Zs'Skayr."_ he eventually offered, narrowing his eye again.  
  
Silas offered him a smile and, after a moment's hesitation, a hand stretched out to shake.  
  
"I'm Silas."  
  
Zs'Skayr stared down at Silas' outstretched hand with the most blatant expression of disbelief that his largely-featureless face could manage, and then made a soft noise of disgust and pulled his own hands further away, spurning Silas' advances. Silas wavered for a few moments, a little hurt, and then dropped his hand.  
  
He supposed they didn't have to get along if he didn't want to.  
  
_"...Anyway,"_ Zs'Skayr said, waving a hand to dismiss any further attempts at friendship, _"I_ suppose _I should thank you for freeing me. If you hand over the Omnitrix to me now, my thanks can be your **life**."  
  
_"Omnitrix?" Silas repeated, cocking his head-- and then stuttering a little as the rest of Zs'Skayr's proposal caught up with him. "Whoa, wait, hey! There's no need to-- no need for anybody to _kill_ anybody! Just, relax. Hang on. Uh, this is the Omnitrix?" he asked, finally pushing himself up off of his knees and back to his feet before he gestured to the watch on his wrist. This wasn't... _quite_ how he'd been hoping for this to go, when he'd seen the ghost, but he was really hoping it was just a misunderstanding of some sort.  
  
_"Yes. Give it to me."_  
  
"Why?"  
  
Zs'Skayr made a hissing noise and crossed his arms for a moment, the tip of his tail waving irately like a cat's, before he snapped forward without warning and made a grab for Silas like he was going to claw him.  
  
_"I said give it to me!"_  
  
Silas was lucky enough that his jump backwards to avoid the swiping fingers was reflexive.  
  
"What the fuck!" he exclaimed loudly, as he was forced to dodge aside a second time immediately afterwards and his heart began to pound. "This thing don't come off! What the hell is your problem? Fucking cool it!"  
  
Zs'Skayr continued after him like he couldn't hear him, and in his mad dash to avoid the being, Silas nearly upturned his table and the laptop on top of it, scattering papers as he bumped it, slid underneath, and popped out on the other side of the room. He could feel a hot flush of anxiety beginning to crawl up his neck, as he struggled to decide on a course of action.  
  
_"Give me the Omnitrix now or I'll take your arm with it!"_ Zs'Skayr demanded, sliding intangible straight through the table and chasing Silas into the back of the trailer, trapping him in his bedroom. Silas looked around wildly, terrified, and realized way too late that he could _never_ fit out the tiny windows in this room.  
  
"Easy, easy, easy!" Silas yelped back as Zs'Skayr encroached upon him, and to his mingled fear and indignation, received only a peal of _laughter_ in return. Silas' head was swimming.  
  
He'd never been in a fight before! Not even with a _person!_ How are you supposed to fight a _ghost?_ Aside from with a proton blaster, which, not a helpful train of thought right now, although it certainly would have been a useful thing to have just now-- grabbing a pillow off the bed and throwing it, ineffectually, straight through his aggressor, Silas swore and shook his head as though that would clear it and pressed himself back into the corner, baring his teeth on reflex.  
  
"I swear to god I'll bite your dick off!" he threatened. Zs'Skayr snickered again, either unaware of the meaning of the threat or simply unconcerned, and drifted right up to Silas to shove his face way into his personal space, so close that Silas turned his head halfway to avoid grazing him with his nose.  
  
_"We can be reasonable about this."_ Zs'Skayr said, finally grabbing Silas' arm just below the watch-- Omnitrix-- and holding him steady while he squirmed. His eye was narrowed in glee, his personality evidently sadistic, and Silas just went still and froze for a moment, scared half to death and unsure what to do. _"If it can't be removed, I'll just take the whole arm. You'll survive it. You may even survive the blood loss afterwards!"_  
  
Before Silas could even begin to panic about that, Zs'Skayr raised his free hand-- and his fingers and the skin holding them together shredded like tissue paper, tearing away in bloodless tatters as claws extended in their place, dark and curved and far, _far_ too big to have fit inside the hand that had been there moments before. The rest of his body twisted violently too, grey skin sloughing off like a snake's shed as he held Silas fast, and if he had been eerie _before_ , the sight of the twisted, nightmarish skull that tore through what he had once thought was Zs'Skayr's face nearly stopped his heart, the whole head twisted upside-down in a way that would have snapped a human's neck in an instant.  
  
Silas was pretty sure he blacked out for just a moment.  
  
When he blinked his eyes back open, spots flickering in his vision, Zs'Skayr was still there, pulling his arm taut, and had raised the massive sickle claws on his free hand to swipe, seeming poised to shear off Silas' arm at the elbow within the next few seconds.  
  
Silas absolutely panicked. His brain decided wildly on any possible course of action and, once it had it, forced him into motion the way a cornered mouse will bite a cat.  
  
Silas poked Zs'Skayr right in the eye. Hard.  
  
  
And it _worked_. Zs'Skayr howled like an animal and lurched back from him to clutch his eye, blinded for just a moment and snarling in pain, and Silas dropped to his knees and threw himself underneath and then past him, finally, _finally_ remembering that he _did_ have an actual way to fight in this fight. It would be better than being a human, of that he was certain.  
  
_"You miserable wretch!"_ Zs'Skayr spat behind him, and Silas ignored the furious noises as he slid to a painful stop on his belly, flat against the floor, and desperately slapped the Omnitrix for the first transformation it would get him.  
_____________________________________________  
  
By the time the buzz of energy faded, Zs'Skayr could see again, his eye squinted and painful but working, and as he met Silas' now much, much smaller eyes, he looked _decidedly_ less than pleased. And ten times as horrifying.  
  
Silas looked down at his tiny hands.  
  
"Tinkerbell?" he squeaked. "Now?!"  
  
Well, maybe he'd been wrong! Apparently there _was_ a worse choice than being a human right now!  
  
Jumping to his feet (his teeny, tiny feet), Silas pushed off the carpet and took to the air, the shiny wings of his little fairy form filling the room with adorable pink sparkles, and Silas took just a moment to raise one hand in the most aggressive flip-of-the-bird he'd ever managed before he turned tail and streaked away, making a beeline for the trailer door.  
  
He'd reached the kitchen again before he realized Zs'Skayr wasn't giving chase.  
  
Heart thumping, Silas dared to glance back over his shoulder, and saw Zs'Skayr nearly doubled over in the air where he'd left him, shaking with-- mirth. _Laughter_. He was _laughing_. No longer worried about his eye, his cackling rose in volume even as Silas' jaw dropped, his little fairy face glaring in indignation.  
  
_"A Nemuina?"_ Zs'Skayr asked, apparently so unconcerned about this transformation that he couldn't even be assed to move, _"Astonishing; you've managed to choose the one alien who poses less of a threat to me than **you!** I'm going to **enjoy** pulling you apart."  
  
_"Suck my dick!" Silas yelled back, and threw his tiny body against the front door handle with all the force he could muster.  
  
It was not a lot of force. The handle clicked, but the door was too heavy to move. Silas' hopes sank faster than than a stone in a river as his one exit refused to budge.  
  
"Piss! Shit!" Silas exclaimed, jiggling the handle furiously, and he struggled there for the full few moments allowed to him before a cold presence finally swept up behind him and snapped him up in a cage of claws each longer than he was tall. He went limp as soon as he was caught, anger fizzling out as the fight left him. He was just lucky he wasn't being crushed _quite_ yet.  
  
"What'd I ever do to you?" Silas moaned, pinned between Zs'Skayr's enormous claws with just enough room to turn his head.  
  
_"It's nothing personal,"_ Zs'Skayr replied, in a tone of voice that made Silas shudder from the wicked pleasure that dripped from it. _"But it_ is _going to **hurt.** "_  
  
Turning Silas over in his claws like a little ragdoll, Zs'Skayr held his wings pinched painfully between two clawtips and lifted him into the air, scraping the point of a talon against the Omnitrix symbol on Silas' torso almost playfully. Mockingly.  
  
Silas wriggled, pushed desperately against his claws, but ultimately had as much force behind his limbs as a wet paper bag. He was pretty sure this fairy form didn't even have any teeth to bite with.  
  
"You-- I-- hate you! I _hate_ you! Fuck you!"  
  
_"Struggle all you like. But you cannot resist."_  
  
Probably true. But Silas still wasn't going down without a last spit-in-the-face to the monster who'd decided to ruin everything and tear him apart. He rubbed furiously at his own dress-like feathers as Zs'Skayr dug against his chest, scraping his fingers spitefully through fistfuls of down, and right as Zs'Skayr's claws drew first blood Silas pulled his arms back and threw two big handfuls of pixie dust right at Zs'Skayr's awful face, one after the other.  
  
They both hit their target dead-center, exploding into cute little pink puffs.  
  
Zs'Skayr blinked once, skull covered in glitter, and then reared back and threw Silas straight into the wall as he desperately tried to sweep the sparkles off of himself, hissing and spitting like an alley cat again.  
  
Silas pinged off the wall with a noise like a tennis ball bouncing.  
  
Silas groaned, through a throb of pain, and then pushed himself back up off the floor as he allowed himself a single weak guffaw, holding a hand over his torso where his skin had been scraped bloody and raw.  
  
_"No! **No!** Rrrrgh! What have you done?!"_  
  
"I don't know! But it seems like _you_ do!" Silas chirped, watching Zs'Skayr wiggle angrily while he tried to test his own wings. "So I hope that's poisonous, you asshole!"  
  
The words held a little less weight to them when he sounded like a cartoon chipmunk, but Silas was still going to take his triumph where he got it, by god. He took to the air again, swaying, and fluttered on sore wings right back to the bedroom, where he landed on the narrow windowsill and managed to force the latch open a few inches in a show of herculean strength. Probably the adrenaline.  
  
He didn't look back this time. Zs'Skayr had gone mostly quiet, and Silas hoped it was because he was either falling unconscious or dying as he pushed himself out the window and into free air, the afternoon sun cheery and bizarre in contrast to what he'd just been through. He flew into the nearest copse of trees as fast as his little form would carry him, and then dropped into a bush and hid, making brief eye contact with a startled bird in the same hiding spot.  
  
"Don't you _dare_ start anything," Silas warned it. The bird gave no reply.  
  
  
  
Silas waited a long time before he moved again. Long enough, in fact, that his transformation time ran out, and he was forced back into human form in a burst of light that scared the wits out of the poor robin who'd been hunkering down in the bushes with him, sending it flapping off into the trees with an offended 'cheerp'. Silas forced himself to stand up on shaky legs.  
  
He was visible now. There wasn't any proper cover to be had at his real size, not this close to the campground, and no way in _hell_ was he going back to his RV. That meant the only way he could go was back through the woods proper, along the shitty gravel road that led up to this place, and hopefully someone else would be driving near enough to the campsite that he could at least get them to drop him off somewhere safe, somewhere _far_ away from here.  
  
Maybe in a week or two he could chance returning, just to see if any of his shit was still there. Everything he owned was in that goddamn RV with the ghost.  
  
...Who still hadn't come out to give chase, which was odd, but Silas wasn't going to spurn a gift when the universe had decided to give him one. He turned away from the trailer without a second look and set off into the woods just as fast as he could manage on his aching legs, following the beginning stretch of the gravel road back up through the trees and weeds and on to freedom, crashing through the leaves in his very best Bigfoot impression.  
  
It was only once Silas had lost sight of his RV entirely and truly disappeared into the forest, his anxiety _finally_ beginning to dissipate, that his luck ran out and God decided to flip him off yet again.  
  
Because _something_ caught around his wrist like he'd been lassoed, and without any warning Silas absolutely clotheslined himself. He twisted and fell hard into the pine needles with a soft gasp of breath.  
  
Flat on his back, Silas looked, bewildered, down at his wrist.  
  
The Omnitrix was glowing. A thin beam of pink light, like the world's longest glowstick, was emanating from the dead center of it, and as Silas tugged against it experimentally the beam held itself like a solid thing, like a rope or a leash. The other end of it disappeared somewhere back into the bushes.  
  
Right back where he'd come from.  
  
"...Oh, _fuck_ me."


End file.
